Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) becomes India’s first infrastructure company to raise 20-year money from international markets
Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (‘APSEZ’), the transport and logistics arm of the diversified Adani portfolio, successfully priced a USD 750 million senior unsecured USD notes issuance with 20 years and 10.5 years tranches at a fixed coupon of 5.0% and 3.8% respectively. The issuances were closed on July 26th, 2021 and was oversubscribed by over 3 times. APSEZ has continued to receive exceedingly strong participation (for its successive bond offerings) from its high-quality real money investors across all geographies
This issuance establishes the Adani Group as India’s leading issuer with the ability to access international capital markets across all market cycles. APSEZ is the only infrastructure company in India to successfully raise 20 years money from international markets, an achievement that underscores the strength of the company’s unique business model and strong fundamentals as well as APSEZ’s commitment to ESG and the UN Sustainability Development Goals. Within the Adani portfolio, APSEZ is the third issuer of long tenor bonds after energy utilities Adani Green Energy Ltd (‘AGEL’) and Adani Transmission Ltd (‘ATL’).
Having issued the long tenor bond in developed markets, APSEZ has elongated the debt maturity to over 7 years from 6 years. APSEZ’s natural hedge through its foreign currency earnings allows the company to manage its foreign currency exposure. This issuance has also reconfigured the ratio of APSEZ’s debt from overseas investors from 69% to 73%.
Mr. Karan Adani, CEO and Whole Time Director of APSEZ, said, “APSEZ is proud of being India’s first infrastructure company to raise USD 750 Mn. of dual tranche 10.5-year and 20- year unsecured bonds in global capital markets. This issuance reflects the confidence international financial markets have in the fundamentals of the Adani Group’s business model and its ability to execute. It further demonstrates our ability to mobilise global resources commensurate with our long asset life and is a part of our capital management program to lock lower interest rates over an extended tenor and extend debt maturity. The reduced cost of capital will translate into greater capital efficiency as well as enhanced shareholder returns.”
Following this issuance, APSEZ has raised the national bar for issuing long tenor bonds and
has established a robust financial foundation that will help continue support the
development of large infrastructure assets. The Adani Group’s growth model of building
and developing world-class infrastructure assets rapidly and thereafter accessing global
financial markets is unique and unreplicated in India’s business landscape.
The JLMs to the transaction were Axis Bank, Barclays, Citigroup, DBS Bank, Emirates NBD,
JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Mizuho Securities, MUFG Securities, SMBC Nikko, and Standard
Chartered Bank.
Dr. Reddy's and ICICI Lombard collaborate for pilot launch of first-of-its-kind integrated and cashless digital health solution in India
SVAAS Wellness Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Limited (BSE: 500124, NSE: DRREDDY, NYSE: ROY, NSEIFSC: DRREDDY, hereafter referred to as "Dr. Reddy's") and ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited ("ICICI Lombard") today announced a partnership for the pilot launch of a first-of-its-kind cashless outpatient offering in India.
The partnership marks the launch of Dr. Reddy's digital health solution 'SVAAS' and demonstrates ICICI Lombard's deeper foray into the wellness space. For Dr. Reddy's, it will bring together four key touch points in the journey of outpatient healthcare and wellness - doctor consultations, pathology laboratories and diagnostic services, pharmacies, and insurance - through various suitable collaborations. For ICICI Lombard, it will enable it to offer its wellness solutions through its comprehensive IL TakeCare app to a larger set of healthconscious consumers
To start with, these services will be provided in the cities of Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam. It will be scaled up to key metros and tier 1 cities in the coming months. As part of the pilot, these holistic offerings will be available through ICICI Lombard's unique wellness and insurance related app, IL TakeCare.
The partnership combines the core strengths of SV AAS in the form of extensive healthcare
professional networks with the established insurance and wellness-oriented solutions of ICICI
Lombard. Users will benefit from cashless access to consultation from leading doctors. and
healthcare professionals across specialisations and geographies, pathology laboratories and
diagnostic services, pharmacies, and a comprehensive support centre, all on a simple, easily
accessible mobile platform. It offers options of in-person as well as remote tele/video
consultations, home sample collections and medicine deliveries, digital health record
management and a comprehensive support and fulfilment system.
Happiest Minds wins Golden Peacock Business Excellence Award 2021
Happiest Minds Technologies Limited (NSE: HAPPSTMNDS), a digital transformation and IT solutions company today announced winning the coveted Golden Peacock Business Excellence Award for the year 2021. The Golden Peacock Business Excellence Award recognises the best management practices for accelerating organisational improvement.
Golden Peacock Awards, instituted by the Institute of Directors (IOD), India in 1991, are regarded as a benchmark of Corporate Excellence worldwide. This year, over 311 responses were carefully scrutinized and 146 applications were shortlisted for final selection through a 3-tier assessment process. The quality of shortlisted entries evidenced the amount of commitment to strive for excellence and desire to maintain high level of quality to achieve world-class status. A distinguished jury made the final selection. Happiest Minds is a winner of the Golden Peacock Business Excellence Awards 2021 for the IT industry.
Joseph Anantharaju, Exec. Vice Chairman, Happiest Minds Technologies said, “Happiest Minds has a comprehensive quality policy in place built on a well-thought quality management system framework derived from business imperatives, technology changes, company strategy and customer feedback. This combined with our commitment to excellence helps us score high on business excellence considerations and we are excited and grateful for this coveted win.”
Venkatraman Narayan, MD & CFO, Happiest Minds Technologies said, “At Happiest Minds, our endeavour is to enable digital technology-led business excellence for our clients. Our distinct Mindful approach towards our people, customers and community makes us stand apart and deliver the best. We are honoured to receive this accolade from the Institute of Directors.”
The awards jury was chaired by Hon’ble Justice M. N. Venkatachaliah, with other distinguished members which included Mr. Shekhar Dutt, IAS (Retd.), Lt. Gen. Surinder Nath (Retd.), Dr. Vivek K. Agnihotri, IAS (Retd.), Mr. Dhanendra Kumar, IAS (Retd.), Mr. Anurag Goel, IAS (Retd.), Dr. Aruna Sharma, IAS (Retd.), Dr. R. K. Somany, Dr. Uddesh Kohli and Mr. Pradeep Chaturvedi.
The Golden Peacock Award Winners will be recognised and felicitated virtually through a specially organised 'Golden Peacock Awards Ceremony', scheduled to be held on Tuesday, August 17, 2021, in the presence of distinguished gathering of business leaders and participants from across the globe.
Tata Communications launches IZOTM Financial Cloud platform in India
a global digital ecosystem enabler, today announced the launch of ‘IZOTM Financial Cloud’, a purpose-built community cloud platform, enabling next-gen digital transformation, customised to meet the stringent data privacy and protection compliance and security guidelines defined by India’s regulators for the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sector. Developed on Tata Communications IZOTM Private Cloud, this platform aids in building an open banking ecosystem that offers BFSI and FinTechs, the foundation to enable advanced digital services. It also allows international banks to expand their footprint in India by meeting the country’s data residency requirements.
With IZOTM Financial Cloud, the financial service providers are able to strengthen their customers trust by operating on a platform that is secure, compliant and supported by a transparent cloud model. It also enriches the end-user experience by enabling BFSIs to launch advanced services with agility.
This purpose-built cloud platform will assist financial organisations to modernise their legacy systems to support the next-gen banking services and accelerate their digital transformation. It will embed security for data, application, and perimeter to manage industry specific cyber risks. It will also fuel future growth in the industry by serving as the execution venue for new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Blockchain.
Enterprises today are aggressively looking at achieving competitive operations and customer experiences to get an edge in their offerings and services. The IZOTM Financial Cloud will help mature the BFSI industry and make it conducive for constant innovation. It will provide resiliency by embedding security controls and adherence to key industry compliances, uptime assurance through high availability of Disaster Recovery (DR) and service assurance through managed cloud infrastructure, and agility to manage dynamic changes in cloud infrastructure requirements and swifter Development and Operations (DevOps) by using emerging technologies. The IZOTM Financial Cloud Command Portal comes with an integrated dashboard for network, cloud and security services along with a personalised, proactive notification and timely information enabled system.
Tata Communications’ cloud capabilities are underpinned by 17 cloud nodes along with its tier-1
network, which carries around 30% of the world’s Internet routes. Tata Communications has also been
awarded the best Managed Multi-cloud service provider of the year by Frost & Sullivan 3 times in a row.
The company has partnerships with leading ISPs and major cloud providers.
TCS Named a Leader in Continuous Automation and Testing Services by Independent Research Firm
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), a leading global IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, has been recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Continuous Automation and Testing Services, Q3 2021
In an assessment of 15 global continuous automation and testing service providers, TCS received the highest score in the Current Offering category. According to the report, “TCS is excellent at large-scale testing transformation, client execution models, and pervasive quality engineering (QE) testing accelerators.” It went on to say that “A rich innovation roadmap of investments, including blockchain and IoT testing, autonomous testing, and low-/no-code testing, also contributed to [TCS’] above-average scores.” The report noted, “TCS got above-average client intimacy scores and such [customer] quotes as, ‘They have gone over extra miles many times, always focused on customer delight. Could not have asked for more.’”
“With the new normal accelerating enterprise adoption of digital technologies including cloud and AI, our focus has been to deploy innovative and comprehensive quality engineering solutions across the IT value chain for our customers and assure their path to business growth,” said Prabhakar Karamsetty, Global Head, Quality Engineering and Transformation (QET), TCS. “We believe our positioning as a Leader in this report is a testament to our vision and strategy, investments in building intelligent, flexible and outcomedriven quality engineering services, and the resultant market success.”
TCS’ QET practice offers a comprehensive portfolio of QE services, flexible engagement models and AI driven QE accelerators which are pervasive across the quality value chain, enabling the customers to adopt the best-fit quality strategy, minimize business risk and enrich their end customer experience. QET has also established a unique Transformation Office, with specific set of QE offerings to continually transform the quality landscape of its clientele.
TCS leverages its Cloud Assurance and Big Data Assurance Platforms to provide holistic assurance to enterprises in their cloud and data migration and modernization initiatives. The TCS SmartQE platform has been instrumental in enabling AI-led testing across the QE value chain and has capabilities to validate AI systems. Given the uptick in digital inclusivity, the TCS CX Assurance platform is a key lever for maximizing end-customer experience by assuring accessibility, performance, compatibility, and the security of applications.
“Our continued focus on innovation has enabled us to develop comprehensive capabilities in AI-led QE as well as the pioneering platform-based approach to quality. Our deep contextual knowledge, technology expertise, vast portfolio of intellectual property and customer-centricity are the key levers of our market traction and will enable us to make greater strides in the new normal,” added Prabhakar Karamsetty
TCS offers a consulting-led, cognitive powered, integrated portfolio of business, technology and engineering services and solutions. This is delivered through its unique Location Independent Agile™ delivery model, recognized as a benchmark of excellence in software development.
A part of the Tata group, India's largest multinational business group, TCS has over 500,000 of the world’s best-trained consultants in 46 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $22.2 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021, and is listed on the BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange) and the NSE (National Stock Exchange) in India. TCS' proactive stance on climate change and awardwinning work with communities across the world have earned it a place in leading sustainability indices such as the MSCI Global Sustainability Index and the FTSE4Good Emerging Index.
Wipro and Designit Research Shows that 68% of CMOs Say Empathy and Transparency Surpass Innovation in Brand Success
Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company and Designit, a Wipro company, today announced the findings from a new global Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) survey of more than 1,000 marketing leaders around the world. The study identified three types of CMOs, and how leading companies have adapted to the market disruptions caused by COVID-19. The findings offer a comprehensive look at how brands and their CMOs responded to the global pandemic, and the strategies they are prioritizing as they build momentum towards recovery.
Though every CMO responded differently to the crisis, the study identified three distinct
personas:
The Disruptor - Approximately 9% of CMOs avoided conventional tactics and adopted
radical new strategies in the face of uncertainty
The Progressive - Roughly 60% adopted bold and innovative tactics, but based their
decisions on past experiences
The Traditionalist - The remaining 31% favored the tried and tested methodologies to
reach customers
“This research offers insights to marketers on how to succeed in the face of significant challenges. It revealed that disrupter personas are poised for success in an era of uncertainty and increased expectations. Guided by brand purpose, the disrupter displays an unwavering commitment to customer experience (CX), and driving actionable intelligence from data insights that allows for continued success,” said Rajan Kohli, Managing Partner - Integrated Digital, Engineering and Application Services, Wipro Limited.
84% of CMOs also agreed that one of the most significant challenges in their field is the application of data and marketing technology. While they can outline the need for robust marketing technology and data, 70% still feel that there is a gap between the current capabilities of these solutions, and their vision. To complicate matters, 12% were forced to sacrifice investment in this vital area during 2020, as companies made COVID-related cuts.
Other key findings from the research include:
Within the next two or three years, 82% of marketing and CX leaders plan to create
new types of content and generate experiences to gain a sustainable, long-term
competitive advantage
62% of marketing and CX leaders cite the need for a 360-degree, data-driven view of
their customers
81% of marketing and CX executives are betting on employee engagement as a
competitive strategy
70% of executives are prioritizing implementing purpose-led initiatives to become or
stay industry leaders
61% of companies are prioritizing design thinking as a business strategy to become
leaders
“Over the last 18 months, brands have had to react to unforeseen global changes. Customer and employee needs and expectations changed rapidly, and priorities were redefined. In the face of a public health crisis that pulled us in different directions, empathy and human connection became the key ingredient for brand survival. Brands that changed strategy quickly and put the human experience before commercial gains thrived the most,” said Sunil Karkera, Global Managing Director, Designit.